


There's a light at the end of the tunnel (but I'm learning to block it out)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [33]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Iron Man 2, Pepper doesn't know, Tony's trying to make it easier on everyone, agnst, when Tony's dying from blood posoining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 03:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15963860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: It takes him a while to believe that he's going to die.He'd survived the cave.  The desert.  Stane.  Built himself a metal monster and stuck himself inside it, walked away every time he should have died.Of course he's going to survive this.It takes Tony a while to admit that he was wrong.





	There's a light at the end of the tunnel (but I'm learning to block it out)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys. I realize I haven't updated in a while, but college is a lot of work. I'm going to update whenever I can though, because this series (and hearing from you guys) is literally my favorite part of my life right now. 
> 
> (Which, when you think about it, is really a low bar to set for yourself, but whatever, right?)
> 
> This one goes out to @igotyoufirst

The first time the results show up, Tony almost doesn't believe it.

He should have gone to the doctor.  He knows that, but he'd developed a mistrust of too clean offices and smiling nurses and pointy things that are about to be jabbed into his arms at any time, so he doesn't, just stays in the garage and insults DUM-E while Jarvis runs a health scan, thinking the whole time that it was nothing.  Something that would go away if he just ignored it or Pepper could make disappear with one of her tea's and a bottle of Tylenol and one of her special smiles, the soft one, the one she gives when he is hurting or when she is proud of him.

( _Though lately, so often when she is proud of him he is also hurting, hurting himself or someone else just so other people can live their lives without watching everything they built for themselves crumble under their feet.  He supposes it's still better than the looks she used to give him._ )

He didn't expect to be told that he was dying.

"No,"  He says, because that is what you always think when someone tells you that you are dying, you just reject it out of hand, because it just seems impossible.  You are not hurt.  You are not in pain.  You have so many things left to do, so many ideas to push out into the world, so many people you love who might not even really know it ( _though she has to know, right?_ ), so you look this new thing right in the face like force of will is enough to make it leave, square your shoulders and say: no.  "Run another scan."

"Sir."  It's amazing, how much the AI reminds him of JARVIS, even now.  He hadn't meant to make them so similar.  It was just supposed to be a tribute, to have the worlds leading AI named after the man who had loved him most, his only shelter in the storm of his childhood.  Instead he just made a shadow.  "That's not-,"

"Jarvis."  He's clutching onto the side of the table.  The taste of coffee is dying on his tongue, and DUM-E is bumping it's head into Tony's hand like he can tell that he is upset, and the metal is cold against his skin.  "Run another scan."

 

 

 

Once he admits that there is something wrong, it gets easier.

He'd survived the cave, that shrapnel ripping him open and his chest torn apart under the bright light of Yinsen's surgery table, his lungs filled with water and those long moments where he went without air, the bitter taste of fear curling up in his mouth, built himself a giant metal monster and put himself inside it and walked right out of there, and then he flew through the sky, a man in the can hurtling down into the sand and praying to God that it won't hurt when he dies.

He survived the desert, too, wandering around out there in the heat and the sun and the sand until he fell to his knees underneath the roaring of helicopter blades, found his way into Rhodey's arms and was met with the knowledge that this person, right here, had never once considered stopping the search.  

He survived Stane.

Of course he'd be able to survive this.

"Come on."  The lab is on privacy mode for the first time in months.  Pepper has to knock in order to come in.  He's waiting for the moment where she asks him what's wrong, but it never comes.  "There has to be something we haven't thought of."

"Sir,"  Jarvis says, and Tony does not want to hear it, because he already knows.  They had run all the solutions and found none.  Every element, every known medicine- nothing.  There is only this.  

"Don't say it."  Tony taps his fingers on the reactor in his chest, lets the heat burn his skin.   There's something wrong with it.  It's not meant for extended use, not yet, but the problem is he cannot find the thing that would improve it.  When it gets hot enough to burn, that means he needs to go to the garage and switch the cartridges.  He really, really wishes there was an easier way for him to track it.  "I don't want to hear it."

 

 

 

"Tony?"  He can hear her before he can see her.  It takes a moment for him to focus on things, now.  The edges are always bleary, and the sight of her is no different.  "What are you doing?"

"Nothing.  I-,"   _I was sitting in the darkness and staring at old photos of my mother, wishing that I had hugged her one last time before she left that day.  I can't remember if I told her that I loved her.  Does it matter if what you remember is wrong, if it only exists in a memory?  There's no one left to correct me._ "I just fell asleep."

"You're falling asleep everywhere, now."  She's got her soft smile, like she knows.  Or maybe that's how she smiles at him when he isn't looking, and she just thinks that he can't see that well in the dark.  "Maybe you should try to get some actual sleep."

Pepper's teasing, but she isn't at the same time.  He knows that he worries her.  More so after he started flying around in  suit, trying to kill a bunch of bad guys.  It doesn't matter how many times he had promised that he wouldn't get hurt- Pepper knows that that's a lie.  And now it seems that he's gone and proved her right, all because he stuck this thing in his chest.

"I sleep."  He tries for a smile and it aches.  "More than you, probably."

"And who's fault is that?"  Pepper hops up onto his desk, yanks her skirt down closer to her knees.  Tony reaches out to her, rests his hand on the back of her calf just so he has some part of her to hold onto, and she doesn't push him away.  "Maybe if you stopped working me so hard I'd be able to get some sleep."

"You could take a day off.  Take a vacation."  She's joking, but Tony latches onto the idea.  "We could go together."

"Together?"

She laughs.  Tony doesn't.

"Go to an island.  Or the city, rent the biggest room on the highest floor and live off take out for a week.  You and me."  He thinks that the memory of that would carry him through these next awful months, if she agreed.  Thinks that if she said yes, he might just go and say that he loves here, right here and now.  But she won't say yes.  Pepper wouldn't be Pepper if she said yes to offers like that.  "Say yes, Pepper."

"Tony."  He likes the way she says his name.  Tony's started to keep a  list in his head, of all the things he's going to miss the most.  He started it in the cave, but it's turned into something different, now that he's gotten the chance to live again and then had it snatched away.  "You know we can't do that."

"I know."

"I want to."

"Then say  _yes._ "  He thinks, wildly, that he should tell her that he's dying.  Let her make her decision then.  But not yet.  He hadn't really given up, yet.  "Please, Pepper."

"People will talk."  She sounds regretful.  Pepper never sounds regretful, or hesitant.  She always knows what she wants.  He's the only exception.  

"They always talk."  Pepper laughs.  "Let's give them something interesting for once."

"Not this time."  Pepper shakes her head, slides off her desk, and when she passes by to get the door, she let's her fingers trail over his shoulder.  "Good night, Tony."

 

 

"We can delay it,"  Jarvis tells him, "But there's not stopping it."

"What if I take the shrapnel out?"  He takes another drink of the smoothie.  It's gotten to the point where he has to carry around coolers of it in the back of his car, just to counteract the effects of the reactor in his chest.  ( _He thinks of it like it's a parasite, digging into him and drawing things out at the same time, like he could map its progress inch by inch_.) "Then the arc reactor isn't even part of the equation anymore."

Not, of course, that that's ideal.  No reactor in the chest means that the Iron Man suit would need to be reworked, and that's bad, seeing as how he had gone on national television to tell the whole world that he's America's new line of defense, the only true version of mutually assured destruction that they need.  

"It would."  But.  There's always a but.  "But the technology needed, it doesn't exist."

"It would if I made it."

"You'd be dead by then."  

It's the first time that Jarvis had said the words out loud, and the first time Tony starts to think about giving up.

 

 

 

After that, it's not about surviving.  

It's about moving on.  Making a mark.  Having the world keep turning when he's gone, with as little a ripple as possible when this thing in his chest finally kills him.

He sets the suits to accept Rhodey as a secondary controller.  Donates all his art to a charity he can't remember on a whim, drunken and too tired to do anything other than sign on the dotted line of the contract they send him.  Puts Happy in charge of security even though he isn't all that qualified, sets up the beginnings of a scholarship fund in his name, ensures that the Maria Stark foundation will continue without him to watch over it, even though he knew Pepper would have taken care of it.  

He does other things, too.

Sets up a trust fund for Rhodey's kids, if that ever happens.  Adds a generous retirement fund to Happy's contract.  Thinks about leaving all his assets to Pepper, then reconsiders and only leaves her half.  

And the house.  

It's only fair.  After the will readings that came out of his stay at Afghanistan, she'll be expecting it.

The company goes into her hands, too.  Not because he views it as a gift, but because she was the one who taught him what it meant to be the CEO, the only person he can think of who has the skill to handle it all.  The only person he can think of who he knows won't ever let his guns be used to kill American citizens.

It's going to have to do.

 

 

 

"You know I didn't mean to leave you, right?"  The words come out of his mouth without thinking about it.  It's a confession, but not the one he had wanted.  Though it's a bit easier to talk about that night at the gala ( _his hand on the open skin of her back, warm night air, him thinking about pointing out a constellation because he couldn't think of anything else to say and then realizing that the city lights covered them all up_ ) than to look her in the face and say that he's dying.  "That night."

Pepper knows what he's talking about.

"The night at the gala?"

"I was getting you drinks.  Exactly how you ordered.  I was coming back."  Like that matters.  "But then there was something I had to do."

"That village."  She's not giving him any clues to what she was thinking.  Tony thinks it would be easier if he could tell, because then he would be able to know if saying  _hey, I realized I love you like a week before that and I was scared that you didn't think about me like I think about you, so I thought it was better to keep you like this -at arm's length- just so I could have you in my life_ was a good idea.  "You had to kill some bad guys."

"I didn't want to kill them."  He figures it's a good point to clarify.  "I just wanted to make up for my mistakes."

"Wash that invisible blood off your hands."  

"Damned spot,"  He says, because he was better at deflecting than anything else, and because he was going to be dead in sixth months he says, "I was going to ask you on a date when I came back."

"I would have said yes."

"And then I would have kissed you.  Not at the gala."  His breathing is shaky, like hers was right before she tried to kiss him and he pulled away.  "After the date."

"I would have liked that."  He still isn't saying it.  He won't say it. Maybe he won't die.  Maybe- maybe he'll still figure it out.  "I would have liked that a lot."

"But I didn't."  There's nothing more for him to say.  "Because of the village.  That's- that's the one reason."

"Maybe it's better that you didn't."

"Yeah,"  He says, and the reactor seems to crackle, starts to burn, so he knows that he has to leave.  "Probably."

 

 

 

 Jarvis asks him about making arrangements.

Tony's had a good day, so he doesn't get it, at first.  Pepper had held onto his hand for a full five seconds without thinking about it, and he got the chance to work on one of his cars, and the blood toxicity levels have seemed to slow down, if not level out.  He was on top of the world.

"Jesus, Jarvis, that's all I've been doing, remember?  Pepper being CEO, all that art going to the boy scouts?"  Which didn't make sense, him doing that.  There were things a lot more useful than art he could have given them, but whatever.  It's not like it matters now.  "I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"I meant for you,"  He says, and it was still strange, to have a computer sound like it's in pain.  "For the end."

The end.

It's the part that Tony refuses to think about.  Nurses.  Hospital beds.  Him lost in a sea of drugs to dull the pain, just waiting, waiting, waiting.   He'd faced dying before, but that was always fast, quick, blaze of glory kind of death.  It's another thing entirely, to have to watch it coming towards you at a crawl.

Not that he intends for it to go that far.

 

 

"What's up, Obie?"  He's in a thousand dollar suit, but Tony sits down in the grass anyways.  "How are things?"

He hadn't been here before.  When he was still intending to stick with SHEILD's cover story, he and Pepper were going to have to go to the funeral just for appearances.  But once the truth about Iron Man came out, so did the truth about Stane.  The whole world knew what he had done, which should have made Tony happy, but mostly just left him feeling a little better.

It's hard to find peace about the fact that the man who helped raise you tried to kill you.  Twice.  Possibly more, depending on how you're keeping score.

"I just came here to let you know that I'm dying."  There was a line of graffiti down the side of the headstone.  Tony can't read what it says.  "You got your wish, you bastard."

That felt good, to call him that and think he could hear it, so he says it again.  

"It's the reactor.  You know that thing you wanted so bad you ripped it out of my chest?"  Tony taps his fingers on it and feels the vibrations through his ribs.  "Ended up being useless."

 _So take that,_ he wants to add, but he's trying to make a point here.  Though he doesn't know what point.  Tony suspects he's a little drunk, even if it's hard for him to tell.

(He's always drunk, now, at least a little.  It's the only thing that dulls the pain.  The only way he can pull himself out of bed in the morning, and he is trying so hard to keep up appearances for as long as he can.)

"I didn't want you to die.  That's what I came here to say.  You tried to kill me, and you have, even if you don't get to see it happen and went first."  Which, new bit of irony Tony hadn't thought of until now- If Stane had just given up, stayed his hand for a few more months, Tony would have been dead and the company would have been his.  Everything he wanted, right there in his hands.  "I really was trying to think of a better way.  There just wasn't one."

_I meant to die with you,_ _if that's any consolation.  I intended to, if that was what it took.  I'm just a little late._

"I'm doing this new thing, now, making up for my mistakes.  My sins."  He stares down at his hands, tries to find all that imaginary blood and wonders if it looks any lighter.  "Make things a little better when I get to the other side.  This is part of that."

Tony tries to get to his feet, stumbles, and then tries again.  This time he succeeds, and he reaches into his pocket, leaves the little bottle of whiskey right there in the grass.  He thought about bringing flowers, but this seemed more Stane's style.  More like them.

"Pepper's going to be in charge now.  The company's the only thing in my life I don't have to worry about right now.  She's going to do better than both of us, Obie."  He pauses, screws up his face and squints up into the sun to stop the tears from coming.  "Not that we set the bar very high, right?"

There's no answer, but Tony likes to think that somewhere, he's laughing, maybe even agreeing with him.

There's a first time for everything, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


End file.
